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What frightens the media about Satanism?

“Jimmy Savile beat and raped a 12-year-old girl during a secret satanic ritual in a hospital.” This is the opening line in an English newspaper’s story on Sunday about BBC child rapist Jimmy Savile. The BBC icon, who died in 2011, is believed to be responsible for abusing at least 450 males and females, aged eight to 47.

Dr. Valerie Sinason, president of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability in the U.K., revealed that the aforementioned girl told her in 1992 what happened to her in 1975. Savile wore a robe and a mask while he abused the girl in the basement of a hospital; during the rape, Savile and his cohorts (also pedophiles) chanted, “Hail Satan” in the candle-lit room. Five years later, Dr. Sinason says, Savile abused another girl during a Black Mass ceremony; she, too, heard Latin chanting and witnessed a group of men wearing Satanist regalia. Neither girl knew one another and lived in different parts of the country.

Trevor L. Todd was a classmate of the Newtown, Connecticut mass killer, Adam Lanza. He says Lanza was a devil worshipper who had his own website on the Internet. Indeed, he says the website “had the word ‘Devil’ on it in red Gothic-style letters against a black background. It gave me the chills. It was just so weird.”

Is there a Satanic connection that helps explain the serial rapes of Jimmy Savile and the serial killings of Adam Lanza? We don’t have enough evidence at the moment to say with certainty. But we do know that the media have shown very little interest in exploring this line of inquiry.

While issues like gun control, mental illness and violent video games are worthy of serious discussion, not to research the role that Satanism may have played is simply irresponsible. It is worth recalling that Charles Manson once told the press, “I am the Devil.” It begs the question: What exactly are the media afraid of?